The Creativist's Intellectual Propertyhttp://blogs.yis.ac.jp/19brauers
A peak into the magical wonders of high school and the unknown truths of the world.
Thu, 28 Feb 2019 01:26:31 +0000 en-US
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1 http://blogs.yis.ac.jp/?v=5.1.1http://blogs.yis.ac.jp/19brauers/files/2016/08/cropped-Demon-Bunny-12zgnyz-32x32.jpgThe Creativist's Intellectual Propertyhttp://blogs.yis.ac.jp/19brauers
3232Fisherman’s Barhttp://blogs.yis.ac.jp/19brauers/2019/02/28/fishermans-bar/
http://blogs.yis.ac.jp/19brauers/2019/02/28/fishermans-bar/#respondThu, 28 Feb 2019 01:26:24 +0000http://blogs.yis.ac.jp/19brauers/?p=153During the summer, I worked as a waitress at a restaurant/bar in Shimbashi. In this time I learnt about working in the service industry and unfortunately the effects of one’s identity on how you are treated in the industry. Although the discrimination I received was minimal it made me think about how people’s identities affect their opportunities in life, especially in their careers.

In the time I was working as a waitress, I was often called “Rola”, a multicultural celebrity who is prized for being beautiful but extremely unintelligent, by my coworkers. Although it was clear to see that these names were meant with the best intentions, and they were attempting to compare me to a famous and beautiful celebrity that had the same identity as me, it was uncomfortable to be stereotyped as an Asian dumb blond, idolized by the Japanese community. This was especially upsetting knowing that people expect her to act and stay dumb, which is seen harsh lash back she received when commenting on the politics of Japan. (ローラの‘政治的発言’) When commenting on the architectural plans for Okinawa and collecting signatures for a petition to stop it, many decided it was their place to speak up and say, “you’re a commercial talent, you should not be talking politics” and shut down the post because of their expectations for Rola to continue to be their dumb doll for tv. While initially, this doesn’t seem something to be upset over, the existing ignorance in Japan towards the rest of the world is appalling. In addition to being called “Rola”, when serving customers, they would always wonder what my ethnicity was. Not only questioning, but people would guess my ethnicity. People thought I was from India, Philippines, Brazil, etc. I felt treated like the stereotypical dumb blond constantly. People who were inebriated would take photos of me during my work hours, people would attempt to speak English to me believing I was unable to and would stop me to have conversations with me during busy working hours. Although not upsetting it was, to say the least annoying. Finally, the experience that made me the most upset during my experience happened while I was setting the table for a group of businessmen having a celebration. An older man sitting down near me called my name, as written on my name tag. When answering the call, the man replied that he was just saying the name to try it out. Continuing to set the table, I heard the conversation between a younger coworker and the man who had called my name:

“Can you call her name like that without the use of a suffix?”

“Of course. She’s a foreigner.”

This was extremely upsetting because within Japan using suffixes at the end of someone’s name is a sign of respect. Although I am used to people not using a suffix as I did not grow up in a fully Japanese community, I was upset that the man’s reasoning as to why he should not have to place respect towards my name was because I was a foreigner.

The job itself took little thought. Although at the beginning I found the job exciting as it was a challenge. It was the first job I had taken up outside of the international community where I would earn money properly. Within a month though, the repetitive nature of the work failed to excite me and it made me realize that I would not like to attempt at working as a waitress again. Without a goal to reach, a job can become mundane and lose its importance. My daily challenges simply included attempting to carry as many beer glasses in a tray and balancing acts. The most exciting part of the day was when they fed me dinner because I received food from the restaurant, and having conversations with the bartender I had befriended.

Working as a waitress made me realize how one’s identity can affect their experience in the workplace, and appreciate the challenges of being in school. I strive to land in a workplace that challenges my intelligence and creativity, whilst providing me money to live with.

]]>http://blogs.yis.ac.jp/19brauers/2019/02/28/fishermans-bar/feed/0“Listen”http://blogs.yis.ac.jp/19brauers/2019/01/15/listen/
http://blogs.yis.ac.jp/19brauers/2019/01/15/listen/#respondTue, 15 Jan 2019 01:05:44 +0000http://blogs.yis.ac.jp/19brauers/?p=149In the script and performance you will find below, I used the knowledge of theorist Ann Bogart, and an in-class exploration and analysis of script Buckets, as a further and personal academic exploration.

Below you will find a short script that I have written named “Listen”. It can be performed by any number and composition of actors. A new paragraph indicates a change of speaker. A line that is just an ellipsis (…) is a moment where a speaker: wants to communicate but can’t, communicates without words, refuses to communicate, or is otherwise occupied.

Listen

No

Listen!

No!

Why not

Because I don’t want to

But I have so many important things to say

So does everyone else

Does that make what I have to say less important?

…

I think it’s unfair

Well that’s life

So you’re just gonna let it be cuz “that’s life”?

Yes

Why?

…

How can you be okay with that?

I’m not

Then why aren’t you doing anything about it?

There’s nothing to do

Of course there is. You can speak about it for example.

No one would listen

I would

No you wouldn’t

Yes I would.

Fine

Fine what?

Fine you’ll listen

…

what?

I’m listening

To?

To you

Why?

You have stuff to say

Well I…

yes?

I didn’t mean now

You didn’t mean now.

No

Then when?

Some day

When’s that?

When I find the perfect way to say it

This script was initially written to convey the feelings of frustration of not being heard even when having important things to say. I have often felt that especially children, whilst having opinions on matters of importance, are ignored and their opinions disregarded simply because they are young and “do not have enough experience”. While in some cases this may be true, in others, often kids are more imaginative and have unrestricted thoughts. Furthermore in the piece I directed, the meaning shifted to convey the idea that with the evolution of technology, we are now able to say whatever we would want to online with very little difficulty. This lead to the thought of people constantly updating their Twitter accounts with their days, and mediocre thoughts that no one truly cares about, or listens to. Within all the unnecessary babble online, it is impossible to reach any wide audience when having important thoughts even with this device that can reach potentially 9 billion people in the world.

I used the script, Buckets by Adam Bernard as inspiration for this script. About Buckets, an extract from an academic research paper written prior by myself:

Buckets is a compilation of short scenes, in which some are interconnected while some are completely independent although the whole script is thematically tied together exploring time and mortality. Buckets is written by Adam Barnard and was published in 2015. Adam Barnard started off as a newspaper journalist and a director, directing a few theatrical pieces as well as a couple short films. He then went on to writing short plays for nearby theaters before writing the script for Buckets. Although this is Adam Barnard’s first full show, he has previously directed and filmed 4 short films, each advocating for feminism, anti-racial discrimination, and anti-ableism. His work to eradicate discrimination amongst the human race seeps into his script Buckets through the fact that characters and genders have not been specified which allows a freedom of the exploration of identities within the script and the possibility to break expectations and stereotypes.

The script explores a human’s struggles with coping with their own mortality, with loved one’s mortalities, with the limitations of time restricted within the societal constructs. The significance that Buckets had on me is from the themes it explores but also from the structure of the script. The script has a lot of freedom in structure, the scenes being non-linear and compilations, each have a different feeling and address a different aspect of life and a new perspective or interaction. These personally relevant dilemmas such as how to cope with one’s mortality or lack of time is best explored through theatre.As a student who is rushed through life from institution to institution, living from one deadline to the next, time becomes confusing and lost and wasted and within the current society, thoughts of what one does with their time and what is worth one’s times is a recurring thought. A script such as this, that explores mortality and time with little restriction is perfect for applying personal meanings and perspectives, and helps directors to create their own unique impact on the audience members. The challenges I have had directing this play came from one of the reasons I had been interested in it in the first place. Although the play is non-linear and simply a compilation of small scripts gave a range of interesting ideas for me to work with, as each script was so different from the others, to create artistic choices that encompassed the whole play was very difficult. I had many ideas for each of the individual plays, but that would often only apply to one or a few scenes and not the whole script. I didn’t want to decide on one atmosphere or mood to convey to the audiences and that became a wall I struggled to overcome. In our current society, although mortality rates have fallen since the evolution of medical science, so much of the time we have been given, has been turned to wasting it on creating our lives on social media and lamenting over others who seem to be so much happier in their ‘perfect’ lives. Our addiction to our technologies have distanced us from physical communities and our grasp on reality, as we feel more constrained to the eternities of the internet over what time we have left with those we place around us. Buckets convey to audiences the importance of human connection in this ever evolving world, where experiences that are not available to the public are glorified through social media posts, where we live vicariously with desperation caused by the underlying fear of mortality and not being able to truly experience these things for ourselves.

The themes explored in the script are universal and timeless, and therefore will be always relevant to people. Adam Barnard started writing for “Leverhulme Arts Scholarship and it was a new scheme being run with Bath Theatre Royal to create experimental and new work for young audiences”(Hart, theatreroyal.com). Buckets started off as a linear story called “Bucket List” which explored the life of a young girl with a terminal disease and her mind slowly blurring the lines between reality and fantasy being presented in front of audiences. Looking back Barnard felt there had been a lack of connection and enthusiasm to create his original piece and he went back to the origin point of what “Bucket List” had been and found out that, “I was interested in this topic because there wasn’t a personal connection, and I realized I was more interested in time and running out of time and how you decide what you do with it”(Hart, theatreroyal.com). He began to write short scenes which he strung together to create his published play Buckets. Furthermore, In 2015 his wife’s sister, a photojournalist on a trip to document “displaced people and oppressed minorities”(Barnard, Justpaste.it), passed away suddenly due to a severe allergic reaction to nuts at the age of 30. Although rushed to the hospital from the refugee camp where she was documenting, due to the distance from the city of over 200km, an easily treatable condition left too long took the life of a “charming, funny, fun, spontaneous, talented, empathetic, loyal and delightful [woman who] felt like a sister and made [Barnard] feel like a brother” (Barnard, Justpaste.it). It is easy to assume this event was further motivation for the creation of the script, with the realization of the unpredictability of life and sudden proximity to death Barnard and his wife were thrust into.

I enjoy the range of emotions and situations that can be placed within the script and the how the many different interpretations that can come from it. Many can be interpreted either seriously or humorously, and are relatable to people of all cultures and ages. The freedom of interpretation and directorial choices is also seen in the director’s notes written by Adam Barnard at the beginning of the script which states that,

“Buckets can be performed by any number and composition of actors. Gender, where referenced in dialogue , can generally be switched- ‘he’ for ‘she’, ‘mother’ for ‘father’, etc. Some singular voices could be made plural- ‘we’ for ‘I’, etc…

Everything’s an option.” (Barnard, 4)

Buckets is definitely a unconventional play, and uses a similar form to Mamet, a type of script writing where the dialogue is written as close to a real-life conversation as possible, with subjects not explicitly stated, or words on the page being a string of jumbled thoughts, interruptions and points of silence and emotion. This is effective in this piece through the fact that the realism feels to audiences as if they are simply watching a piece of someone’s life, the actions are not exaggerated and strips the piece of fantasy and an excuse for audiences to say that the topics in the theme are not real simply because they are in a play. The script itself is unconventional without any proper characters or structure and without a collective mood through out the show. Some of the scenes are humorous as others are tragic, romantic, simple.

The play was originally performed in the Orange Tree Theatre in London directed by Rania Jumaily and has been described by Sam Marlowe, in The Times to be “a puckish meditation on a fundamental theme: how we give purpose and shape to lives overshadowed by the knowledge of our own mortality… underscored by a fidgety sense of time running out, of once-in-a-lifetime opportunities slipping away, of bucket lists of unfulfilled wishes”. Another commented that “Adam Barnard’s first full-length play… consists of 27 short scenes, has no defined characters or plot and offers a series of observations on life, longings, lists, lusts and mortality…Barnard writes with a wounding intelligence about death. He has something to say… I’m interested to see where he goes next.”(Michael Billington, Guardian)

Using Buckets as a basis for my script, I created a piece that had no specified gender, no specified relationship, and used voice in order to convey meaning and character to audiences. I followed the formatting of Buckets where each paragraph indicates a new speaker instead of placing a character in front of the speech.

In order to convey the message of this piece, I used “Topography”, a convention of Ann Bogart’s theatrical theory, “Viewpoints”. In class, we learned to used gridlines within the physical “Viewpoints” in which we explored “Topography” and “Gesture”. Using what we learned in class, we initially created a piece within the class where we explored each of our individual cultures that lead to our international cultures using topography and gesture. Using what I had learned in my IBDP theatre class, I took the convention of “Topography” and applied it to my own piece, where 8 actors, in pairs, walked around a grid in a symmetrical pattern to each other, all the while staring at their phones. This was meant to convey the lack of human connection that is created through our addiction to technology. Ann Bogart’s Topography creates tension in my piece through creating a robotic feeling to the characters on stage as well as providing an experience in which audience would have to think about the extreme effects of technology on our human connections. This is intended to lead to fear of becoming robotic and losing in contact with our human side, all the while feeling isolated through the dialogue which conveys the idea that while everyone is talking no one is listening.

1. Topography (Bogart)

The landscape, th floor pattern, the design we create in movement through space. In defining a landscape, for instance, we might decide that the downstage area has great density, is difficult to move through, while the upstage area has less density and therefore involves more fluidity and faster tempos. To understand floor pattern, imagine that the bottoms of your feet are painted red; as you move through the space, the picture that evolves on the floor is the floor pattern that emerges over time. In addition, staging or designing for performance always involves choices about the size and shape of the space we work in. For example, we might choose to work in a narrow three-foot strip all the way downstage or in a giant triangular shape that covers the whole floor, etc.

2. Gesture (Bogart)

A movement involving a part or parts of the body; Gesture is Shape with a beginning, middle and end. Gestures can be made with the hands, the arms, the legs, the head, the mouth, the eyes, the feet, the stomach, or any other part or combination of parts that can be isolated. Gesture is broken down into:

1. BEHAVIORAL- GESTURE. Belongs to the concrete, physical world of human behavior as we observe it in our everyday reality. It is the kind of gesture you see in the supermarket or on the subway: scratching, pointing, waving, sniffing, bowing, saluting. A Behavioral Gesture can give information about character, time period, physical health, circumstance, weather, clothes, etc. It is usually defined by a person’s character or the time and place in which they live. It can also have a thought or intention behind it. A Behavioral Gesture can be further broken down and worked on in terms of Private Gesture and Public Gesture, distinguishing between actions performed in solitude and those performed with awareness of or proximity to others.

2. EXPRESSIVE GESTURE. Expresses an inner state, an emotion, a desire, an idea or a value. It is abstract and symbolic rather than representational. It is universal and timeless and is not . something you would normally see someone do in the supermarket or subway. For instance, an Expressive Gesture might be expressive of, or stand for, such emotions as “joy’ “grief” or “anger.” Or it might express the inner essence of Hamlet as a given actor feels him. Or, in a production of Chekhov, you might create and work with Expressive Gestures of or for “time,” “memory” or “Moscow.”

Final Directorial Notes:

During my directing of the piece, I decided to have the two voices in the piece not be seen in order to anonymize and create a more universal and relatable experience for the audience members. I used blue lighting in order to create a cold atmosphere, contrasting to the universality of the piece and separating the characters to look unnatural and slightly robotic and more like their technology than themselves. Finally, I illuminated their faces using the light from their iPhones, as they looked down at their phones whilst the voices were being heard.

Barnard, Adam. Buckets. Nick Hern Books, 2015. Accessed 3 Sept. 2018.

Bogart, Anne, and Tina Landau. The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition. 1st ed, Theatre Communications Group ; Distributed by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, 2005.

Reflection

After actually going through the party, thing’s went better than expected. Although there were things that did not go well or things that our guests were not so impressed by, the part was overall pretty well met. The venue was adored by the guests, and the aesthetics of the terrace were perfect for photos. The idea of having a buffet was good, and the schedule was efficient and well planned out. The things that were not so good was the DJ that was chosen. We should have had a stricter vetting process, as he was not good at understanding and hyping up the crowd. Because of this, the dance floor was mainly empty, with most of the guests enjoying the sunset outside.

In the new school year, I was asked to join prom committee once again as one of the senior supervisors. Initially, the three seniors, including me, was afraid of the fact that this year’s prom committee had too many people and that this would cause conflict in discussion and halt progress. We were proven wrong as the new year’s committee have managed to create groups with individual leaders and have progressed further in a shorter time than we had the previous year.

May 18, 2018

We are 7 days away from prom and are running around getting things done last minute.

This last week we have struggled to stay positive with each other as we are all stressed out from the upcoming exams and the prom that will overlap them. We have had arguments over who has done what and what must be done further, and have gotten frustrated at each other for the mistakes we make. Through this all though, we have managed to group together every time and forgive each other and make compromises in order to solve the problems that arise. I have learned to be more accommodating with others and to avoid conflict if it can be avoided. I have continuously been worried about our group’s collaboration with each other and how that may falter and collapse, but every time something goes wrong we have been able to overcome it as a group which has amazed me. We are relatively happy with our work so far. We have managed to look at what the others have done for the group instead of being upset for the things they have done wrong or haven’t done at all. Our group has definitely become tighter over the year as we have had to support each other, and our fights have probably made us stronger from forgiveness. I can continue to use these skills in the project I am currently working on in Theatre. In that, my goal is not to be a leader but a listener and I believe that the prom group (full of so many outspoken people) has helped to be more compromising and less stubborn.

April 5, 2018

We are finally on track with prom. We have gotten the venue finalized and are moving into specifics. I am organizing the DJ and recently interviewed him. There I learned the importance of man to man communication and not just online. It is easier and much more effective to talk about future plans especially since we need to gather the equipment and materials the DJ needs in order to perform. A bigger reason why meeting someone is so important though is because you can learn much more about a person from their visual cues and body language than you can through online text.

Although plans have been delayed, we are working on getting things done. We have scheduled the plans for the next month until prom with deadlines for what needs to be done when. This will help in keeping on track to our deadline and making sure that everything is in order on the day and we are not freaking out because of missing things when prom comes along. Before every meeting, I have made a list of things to talk about with two other people in order to have the most effective meetings and because it is so easy to forget to mention something. By creating a list with more than one person, you are able to have a discussion then about what needs to be done and what has already been done, as well as what must be mentioned or discussed. In order to be organized when there is so much to do, one must write a list before talking with a group of 6 or more people to keep the discussion on track. The benefits of doing this collaboratively I now understand is to be able to split up the work. If one person were to plan the whole prom, it would be impossible to keep up with all of the things that must get done before the prom. By splitting up the job and creating roles for people, we are able to not worry about some aspects and only worry about our own.

January 18, 2018

Since our last venue had been rejected, we have approached our search for a new venue differently. Instead of picking one that the group like after separately discussing it without our supervisor and the seniors, we decided to ask them what they wanted and building on that and asking them to look at a list of venues and choose one that they enjoyed the most. This was done in order to have our venue not rejected again. A way I lead the group in today’s discussion is by discussing the new venue choices with the supervisor and the seniors when no one else wanted to, after a while I was able to bring in others and contact the new venue to check in by splitting up the work and helping each other out to make sure that we were asking all the questions we needed to and had all the information we needed.

December 19, 2017

During the time I have worked on the Prom Committee I have realized that you must compromise ideas and vote on ideas as a group and try to be on the same page with the others to make sure that things pan out effectively and without too much argument. Although my ideas have not always been accepted, I realize that it is a part of working collaboratively that you pitch ideas and sometimes others agree with it and other times the others reject your idea. As we continue to plan a party for others, I know that it will be difficult for me to accept anything less than perfect and I hope the others feel the same so that we can make this year’s prom as best as it can be. If we all feel the same way and try to reach a united goal, we can work together by using different ideas and different paths towards that goal we will be able to be satisfied in our work.

In October or 2017, I took a workshop on Butoh for a week. There I learnt all about butoh, it’s conventions and its theories. The artwork placed above represents the most significant moments and memories I collected within the week-long workshop.

Here is an explanation:

On the top left corner of the page, you see a magazine cut out of a painting of a malnourished looking man from a magazine. In order to represent one of the masks learnt in the class called ‘The Butoh Scream’ which represents agony, pain, distress, and sadness, I drew on the face to open the mouth and white out the eyes.

On the top right corner, you can see a silhouette of a crumbling, walking person. This was representative another activity where we became different objects or put in different textures into our movements. One of the textures we were asked to explore was crumpling paper. I drew a silhouette a someone walking it, crumpled it up and glued it on the paper to show this.

In the center of the artwork is an infinity sign, one side filled with a spiral and the other with branches. One of the lessons we had in our workshop is the idea of Infinite Fractals. Infinite Fractals are patterns found within nature that become smaller or larger without end. Within Infinite Fractals, there are branches and spirals. Examples of these are spiral shells and centers of sunflowers for spirals, and trees and veins for branches. Nature is one of the biggest influences in Butoh and we also explored fractals within our bodies. We put the movement of the shape of infinity itself (∞), within different parts of our body as we used the skill of isolation (to move one body part separate from the others), to move to music within a space. I struggled with the freedom of this experiment, where we had little instruction other than to create infinity shapes with different parts of our body and feel our bodies connect with the movement.

On the bottom of the page, you can see three faces made from oval shapes, kind of merging into one another. This was my representation of an activity we did in class where three of my classmates were asked to perform the butoh scream in a line against a light shining from underneath them. While watching this, I started to see shapes past their faces, where their movements became one and the three of them merged into one being. It seemed as if they all had the same feeling and somehow through this exercise, they synchronized more than just their movements. The three seemed to hollow out (represented by the blackness past their eyes and mouths) and simply become a representation of the emotion of pain and deep sadness instead of themselves. Watching this was extremely impactful and conveyed to me that even a contemporary, abstract, theatre dance, could convey such deep emotion and meaning when done properly.

Across the page, you see four words: Essence, Imagination, Empty Body, and Isolation. These four words are the themes of Butoh-Fu an extension of Butoh, in which “words/sentences first used by the Master Tatsumi Hijikata to stimulate dancers movement while choreographing and that became a unique method for choreography” (Butoh Channel Berlin, 2015). Essence reminds performers to take and perform the essence of things instead of simply imitating them. For example, to act the pride and fear a lion creates in others instead of simply roaring like one. Imagination is key, as you must free and become your imagination using the words that come to your ears. Empty Body is the practice of making your body an empty slate for new ideas and images to be created. Isolation is the separate movement of body parts that do not interact with each other.

Finally, the background creates an atmosphere for the reflective piece of artwork in which I explored nature as well as my inner body. The dark blue lights represent the depth of one’s self while intermixing with the nature and environment around us that we created through Butoh.

I learnt a lot from exploring the world of Butoh. Through the exploration, I learnt to think of all the possibilities of changing or adding your own meanings to a simple activity, or convention. Through the knowledge I gained through the many theories created by the founders of Butoh, such as Jinen, I learnt about the concept of the cycle of life and death and how one’s body and soul interacts with the nature around them, and this cycle that exists unarguably in these mediums. This became a platform to base my piece of exploration of how life going by can be shown using the slowest, and simplest of movements. I also learnt from this piece the meditating effects of Butoh and in particular Bisoku. It helps you to become more conscious about your individual movements and creates intention in every movement you create. Not only that, it can teach you to make yourself more centered, and relax. Having to be conscious of your every movement pushes you to be in the present, and in order to create a realistic look of gravity being worked on you, you must relax yourself to be able to feel all the gravity’s effects on each of the body parts. I will take this knowledge on to future projects and make sure that every movement I create has been thought out and has intention in it.

After arriving back in Japan I noticed it felt like nothing had changed with the world, although so much had changed within mine. This feeling of coming back to Japan only to find that everything was the same from when I left, created a huge impact on me, and in a way distress. Once I had come back to Japan, everything was so convenient and clean and I felt guilty for having it so easy compared to those who continue to live in deep poverty in Cambodia. I felt the great need to continue to support those in need. And yet, throwing money at the problems seems so condescending, and immoral, and even if that may help them have a better life in the moment, in the long run, ‘ if you give a man a fish, he eats for one day, but if you teach a man how to fish, he’ll eat for an eternity’. It dawned on me, that by coming back to Japan, I had distanced myself from the problem. This made me feel helpless, when I still wanted to help the community to grow and thrive, I had helped a bit and left the country with still many more problems to be fixed. I had a lot of fun getting to know those in different conditions than mine, and I will keep this valuable experience with me as I continue to live life with gratitude for the opportunities I am given.

Describe a time when you engaged with a different culture and the strategies you used to communicate effectively. Reflect on how this influenced your thinking about language and communication.

When I was in Cambodia, although most kids spoke minimal English, and my knowledge of Khmer was limited to how to say “hello” and “goodbye”, we managed to communicate through words, sounds, movements, and sometimes having others translate for us. They taught us numbers and words, while we continued to ask what their names were, how old they were and such. Scripted questions were definitely more comfortable for them with easy answers they had been taught. Other than that, when I attempted to compliment some of them, they wouldn’t always understand the message I was trying to convey. Although this was a struggle, and took a while to be able to convey to them what I wanted to say, through pointing to their bracelet that I liked, and saying that it was good or pretty instead of beautiful or nice, I was able to convey to them that I liked it. When acting as a teacher and teaching them English my group, I realized how difficult it was to teach someone a language when you don’t know their language. As I have a lot of experience when it comes to tutoring those who struggle with English in Japan, I thought that I would find less difficulty teaching those in Cambodia. What I realized when trying to teach the Cambodian kids, was that I only found it easy to teach English in Japan because I am fluent in both languages and when my students don’t understand something, I am able to explain it in Japanese. Trying to teach English without the ability to speak Khmer, we ended up saying words and pointing to objects within the room or having the teachers translate them. We did prepare for the class by using google translate at the hotel the night before to translate the words into Khmer, and said the word in English and then in an attempted Khmer, but it was still extremely difficult. Especially since the group was around 5 people, trying to teach using 5 people was more difficult as the group was not in sync with each other, and we were all uncomfortable to be teaching and in front of the classroom rather than looking at the board. I had also heard at previous points in my life that people are more grateful and nice to you if you attempt to learn their language instead of walking around as tourists and having the entitlement of them needing to speak your language even though you are in their country. As this idea seems quite logical and fair to me, and especially since during the trip I felt that as someone from a first world country, we are walking and intruding their lives, with our wads of cash, and observing these people as if they were intriguing animals and we were on a safari tour. The immense guilt I felt for being a foreigner who could not begin to understand their struggles became a big inner conflict, against the desire to help and have intercultural communication with them and learn as much as I could about them. I felt my sympathies through a glass and felt that I was not allowed to be truly there with them because of my background. This has continuously been a topic of conversation with my older sister where I say that I would like to go on service trips and help to make other’s lives better, and my sister telling me that my sympathies for them are rude, and that they aren’t some pathetic thing that needs saving. This is an inner conflict I continue to struggle with. How do you help those without being better than them? How do you learn to be with them instead of look over them? How do you take less than you give from the new environment? We are raised in an environment where education is a right not a privilege and it is normal for us and all those around us. We are raised in an environment where everyone speaks more than one language and also maybe even more. How can you from that point of knowledge and privilege go to those who are less fortunate and lucky to be born into that environment, how do you say to them “Hey I’m just better than you so I’ll teach you to be better as well.” It is no longer about hard work or life experience or age, it is about how lucky you were when you were born. Anyways, I realized that although it’s possible to communicate and make some form of relationships with those I met, we are also so used to being able to communicate with a wide range of people with our ability to speak more than one language, and not being able to communicate with our most comfortable language becomes a wall to being able to create deeper connections with those around you.

I am wondering if you can add some thoughts on how this you made a “connection with and provided meaningful action to some part of your community in a sustained way, and reflected on the value of having responsibility for your community.”

By considering your role and perhaps an expanded understanding of our ‘community’, then this would be more suitable for the GCD “Community Engagement” core value.

“I believe that being bilingual, TCKs often have an advantage and think differently from other people. Being fluent in two languages help in knowledge and academics through helping us to understand from a young age that there are always multiple ways of expressing things, maybe even in a different language. It also teaches us that each way is individual and unique and things expressed in one language cannot always be expressed in another, showing us the subtle beauty of language and to appreciate it. This idea is not learnt at the beginning but as I grew up I found an appreciation for language and being able to fluently speak two different languages that are so unique from the other. “

-At the beginning of the year

Language is defined as the method of human communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the use of words in a structured and conventional way. Without language our understanding of the world today would be very different. Language was created in the human race through evolution, to teach younger generations, the knowledge gained by the older generation. This was a turning point in history for human beings, and split the evolutionary pathways of animals and human beings even farther apart.

Multilingualism is the ability to speak more than one language. Although in previous years, it was thought that being multilingual was a disadvantage because of the nationalistic ideologies of the times, in this day and age, there are many different studies providing evidence for the benefits of multilingualism.

Being bilingual, I believe I experience the world in a different way than monolingual individuals. Language ties heavily into culture and I believe that it is very difficult to separate the two when talking about knowledge. Through different languages and the cultures attached to each of those languages, I experience the world in a different way as well as gain new experiences and knowledge of the world around me. Keith Chen’s TED Talk made me think about the way the languages I speak changes my focuses in life, and how I grew up as a person learning these languages. In the two languages that I speak, I learn a different perspective of the world, and my position in it as a human being. Japanese is very traditional and is a poetic language, with many different words with the same meaning but different nuances. It is very easy to simply translate English into language, but in order to have the same message with similar nuances, there needs to be further consideration of the words used within the system. One of the easiest examples is the translation of rain to Japanese. In Japanese, there are many different types of rain as you can see below.

雨

(ame)

Rain

小雨

(kosame)

Small drops of rain

嵐

(arashi)

Storm

梅雨

(tsuyu)

Rain at the end of spring around when the plum petals fall to the ground.

春時雨

(harushigure)

Rain in the spring. The unstable rain when the weather changes from sunny to rainy in a matter of seconds.

夕立

(yuudachi)

Extremely hard rain that falls at sunset during the summer.

時雨

(shigure)

Strong rain that stops suddenly usually during the end of fall to the beginning of winter.

The table above shows the many different words in Japanese that you could not explain in a single word in English. This shows that in Japanese, you have to be more considerate of the word you decide to use because each word has a slightly different nuance to it. On the other hand, in English there are many different tropes that you can use in writing to compensate for the fact that English words although have connotations, are not as specific as those in Japanese. In English you create nuances through a string of words. Often English books are much longer than Japanese ones for this reason. By being bilingual, we can keep in mind the things we must consider when using both of the languages individually and using them with both of the languages. This changes my understanding of the world because of the fact that I am able to subconsciously consider aspects of both English and Japanese, not for each individual language, but for both at the same time.

Another thing is that every language focuses on different aspects of life depending on what is important to their culture. In Japanese, it’s nature, and in English it’s emotion and moods. When we talk in each of these languages, what we compare things to, our metaphors, and our explanations of things rely heavily on these aspects of life we like to focus in on. The more languages you speak, I believe the more aspects of life you consider when talking.

Often without further consideration, many people believe that learning two languages is more limiting than beneficiary. It takes up time, it’s more effort and work, it may confuse you to know so many languages, etc. According to the research done by Panos Athanasopoulos and additional research done by Gaia Vince, we can tell that the human mind has developed over the time to adapt to learn more than language and pick up on auditory and visual cues when trying to learn a new language. Not only this, we have found out that “Multilingualism has been shown to have many social, psychological and lifestyle advantages … including faster stroke recovery and delayed onset of dementia” (Vince, 2016). I feel as if these benefits, although taken for granted among the multilingual community, often manage to bring success to those who can speak more than one language. Speaking more than one language manages to connect us to multiple different cultures without a language barrier or anything lost in translation. We are able to connect with multiple different cultures when traveling, and learn more about the world through new perspectives that you may not learn if you travel when speaking only one language. On the other hand, you could state that you can see the world through a new perspective by going to somewhere you haven’t been before. I believe that this is not true as, although you are looking at new scenery, you may not be looking through a new perspective of the world. The language barrier set between the locals and the tourists, create a glass box around the locals, creating more of a museum or zoo than a place where people live and work.

Finally, I often look at my own ability to speak more than one language and consider what the implications are of being able to communicate in more than one way. Often times I notice that when I am trying to translate from two different languages, direct translations are easy, and are very much like opening a dictionary and taking two words with the same definition. The problem comes when you try to use idioms and phrases, or words that only make sense in the context through the connotations connected to the word. I often have trouble when trying to write up essays in Japanese since I write more in English. There will be a certain idiom or word that I want to use in my sentence and I can fit it into the Japanese sentence, even though the phrase or word itself is in English. It becomes a problem when I look up direct translations, or ask my peers, teachers, or parents, and although they answer different words that could be placed into the slot, I often become frustrated with the fact that none of their answers have the connotations or nuances that I would like to use within my writing. Although in the moment, I am upset with my inability to express or communicate my thoughts, with further consideration, I appreciate that although I may not be able to always convey my feelings in the language I want to, the ability to be able to convey it at all is a priceless gift I have received by being born into the international community and having the opportunities to learn so many more languages.

Film critiquing took more time and was more difficult than originally anticipated. But I also learned that film critiquing is very similar to analyzing any other art form.

Looking at my project through the lens of personal and cultural expression I learned that art always has a lot of connection with the psychology and relationship of the viewer and creator, with their own experiences and their perception of the world. By learning and practicing film critique, I learned that film is a media in which the creator and the viewer communicate. Through the film, the creator shows the audience the world through their lens, the audience sees this and creates meaning and learns more through this new lens.

After successfully going through and reflecting on my personal project, I learned how important it was to my learning. One of the reasons the personal project is so important is because it helps you become more independent in decision-making. In school, you are often told what to do, but outside of school, we are left to make decisions by ourselves. By going through the personal project, we become more independent as well as better decision makers. The personal project is also important because it teaches students to decide on one thing they would like to achieve, then figure out how to reach that goal by themselves. Although it spans a period of less than a year, it helps on a larger scale. For example, I want to become a successful actor, so I would study film and advance toward my goal. The third most important thing you learn during the personal project is persistence. For a project that takes months to complete, you must continuously work on it to keep the momentum.

In this project, I expressed a lot of skills as a thinker. I made sure that all of my notes and process journal entries were clearly organized so that I would not struggle to look through my notes later on. This helped me when I was writing my blog posts, because I could continue to look back at the knowledge I had acquired throughout my research period and refer to that knowledge on the posts. When I interviewed Professor Ainge, I made sure to record the interview and take notes by listening to the recording multiple times. I also made sure to create to-do lists whenever I could, in order to understand the steps I needed to take next to reach my goal. As I was not able to use my action plan as effectively as I would have liked, having short-term to-do lists turned out to be a better approach for my process.

During this project, I improved as a risk-taker. The biggest risk I took throughout this project was choosing a topic on which I barely knew anything. Being an ambitious student, I decided to challenge my limits of absorbing and learning new information in a short amount of time. I had not had a lot of time, as I was new to the school and had less time for research. I had not fully prepared to interview Professor Ainge. With the short amount of time I had, I wrote down questions I could ask, which ended up being extremely beneficial.

During this project, I continued to be a communicator. I had to make sure to collaborate with many people to create my final product. I had to communicate with my mentor as well as Professor Ainge and my peers. I made sure that in sent emails, I used the correct, formal language where I included all the information needed to understand the context of the emails. Not only this, in my exhibition I made sure to convey my product, my goal, and my knowledge as clearly and succinctly as possible to make sure the guests received as much as they could from my exhibit.

Throughout the personal project, I spent a lot of time reflecting on my work and my process of working. Whenever I sat down to work on my personal project, I made sure to reflect and if I hadn’t reflected, I created a reflection for a collection of events that had happened since the last entry. At one point in my project, I had gotten stuck because I had been too ambitious. I then decided to adapt my final product, so it would be more achievable in the given time.

Conclusion

Although the personal project is not something that I particularly enjoyed while doing, as it is difficult, time-consuming, not to say stressful, the feeling of accomplishment I felt when I finally finished, standing in front of something I was proud of, that I created by putting in all of that effort, is what makes it such an important learning experience. As I reflect on the personal project, and knowing the struggles I went through, I feel proud of the product, but not only that I realize all of the new skills I’ve learned by going through the process.

The things I have learned in the personal project will help me in other aspects of my life in the future. This includes not only knowledge on film critiquing but also the skills I developed by completing the personal project.

Around January of 2017, the drama department put on a show called “Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind” (If you would like to know about the theatre show here is the link: TMLMTBGB). The show was a compilation of skits which one of them were written and directed by me. The piece was a very emotional and personal topic for me, sexual harassment.

Here is a passage from my Drama Journal about the creation of the piece:

I decided that I would like to create my own play. For a while, I had wanted to create art that conveyed my experiences as a victim of sexual harassment to others. It had had a large impact on me and on how I lived my life. As something that is difficult to process I turned to all kinds of art to channel my feelings into as well as spread awareness of sexual harassment. Hearing about TML and the format of skits stringed together to create one show, as well as the objective of the goal to express opinions on current issues, I decided that TML would be the perfect place to express my feelings. I started writing by thinking of the atmosphere I wanted to create and what emotions I wanted to make the audience feel. I decided that in the end I wanted the audience to empathize with the main character, and understand the big picture of what people go through from the perspective of a victim. I wanted to make sure that people took my performance seriously and it made people rethink their lives.

By creating this piece, “Used”, I lessened the pain that I carried around as well as spread the word about a very important problem. Creating and presenting this piece terrified me because of the risk I was having to take in order to do it. Firstly, I was terrified of the reactions I would get. The piece was my way of opening up about my pain to the world, and I was terrified that if anything in the piece went wrong that I would create the wrong atmosphere resulting in humor. I was also scared that the actors would not take the piece seriously which could cause a mistake to occur during the presentation of the piece. Since this was such a sensitive topic for me, receiving such reaction to invalidate the pain I had gone through or seeing that the audience didn’t care about the topic and the reality of going through such a traumatic experience would emotionally destroy me and collapse the work I had done rehabilitating myself. The second fear I had in presenting this piece was getting labeled as the “broken girl”. I took a very high risk showing the most vulnerable parts of myself. This opened myself up to so much possible judgment that would not help the development of my emotional stability. I was terrified of people treating me as if I were to burst at any second and also being judged for being labeled an “attention whore”. I had already been sensitive to sexism especially since the incident and had always had to ask people to stop. This was a very big step for me whether or not it was to move forward or backward and I was terrified, from my experiences that it would instead be a step back.

I worked very hard and made my actors practice the piece repeatedly to make sure that the piece would be perfect for the show day.

Standing backstage I heard my title being called up. Nervous but determined to honor my piece I walked up onto the stage: ” USED. GO!”.

As the show came to an end we all held hands and bowed for the audience. My friends and family came up to hug me and congratulate me and told me that “the piece where you were the main character was amazing” and with the relief I felt from all the compliments as I told them that I wrote the piece, I started to cry. Everyone was so supportive of me and the piece that I had nurtured which I cared for as if it were my child. It was my intellectual baby and everyone loved it so much. People came up to me to tell me that they had tears welling up in their eyes from such an emotional piece. I was so amazed at the reaction of love and support I was receiving and I knew that I had truly touched these people’s hearts with my piece. The reaction I received was more than what I imagined. I had only hoped for people to watch my piece and understand what people go through, but I received more than just understanding. I received love and empathy from all these people.

Creating this piece I became emotionally more well by telling people about my problems, and I also realized my social wellness from all the support and love I was able to receive from my piece. This piece helped me emotionally by telling people my pain through art.

]]>http://blogs.yis.ac.jp/19brauers/2017/06/03/wellness-tml/feed/2Field Studies- Okinawahttp://blogs.yis.ac.jp/19brauers/2016/12/04/field-studies-okinawa/
http://blogs.yis.ac.jp/19brauers/2016/12/04/field-studies-okinawa/#respondSun, 04 Dec 2016 06:06:39 +0000http://blogs.yis.ac.jp/19brauers/?p=10Many things happened in Okinawa. At the beginning of the trip my 2 roommates, and I wanted to go home. We did not enjoy the hotel we were staying at, the diving was simply tiring and left us no joy and the only thing we looked forward to was the daily trip to the supermarket and our midnight gossip. We talked about our newly found relationships within the grade, as we were all new. As the week went on my mood continued to go on a wild rollercoaster. As my 2 roommates talked about how much they missed talking to their significant others, I wished that mine was nowhere near me. It was extremely bothering and took over most of my thoughts during the trip. By the end of the week I was emotionally, mentally, and physically tired from all the studying for our test, from the diving lessons themselves, and the emotional strain from my collapsing relationship not only with my boyfriend but also with one of my 2 roommates. The 3 of us were so tired and one of the roommates and I continued to have tiny fights about things that didn’t matter whatsoever.

Although the trip included a lot of fighting, tears, and anger; I have an overall good memory of it. I was with my 2 closest friends, and saw and breathed underwater (which was amazingly cool). The thing that had the most impact on me through the trip was when we were finally done with all the skills we were required to learn, and actually dived simply for entertainment. Underwater, sounds are distorted, so that you hear everything but nothing at once; there is no gravity around you, or it feels like there isn’t, and color is distorted as well, so you are in a world of blue. Underwater, I felt like a child again, with the sense of wonder the situation created around me. I felt solace, enveloped in a sort of hug from the water around me. It was a different world altogether that I had experienced for the first time in the 15 years of my life.

Coming back from the trip I realized a couple things. I have come to peace with my relationship with my boyfriend, although it ended within the next week. I also realized I had to put my emotional stability before anyone else’s. Other than that I used to be worried that something would go wrong during the week and I would do something wrong while I was diving. I am glad to be home safe, but not only that I learnt that I sometimes I have to learn to trust myself. In the trip, I was able to get closer with my roommates and get out of my comfort zone with my relationship with not only them but everyone in the trip. I also learnt to get out of my comfort zone in order to experience these wonderful things in life.

During the trip, I learnt about how to care for the ocean and be within it without harming anything of the other creatures that live within the water. Being able to dive deeper into the ocean showed me the beautiful things nature has to offer and the importance of making sure that we maintained the earth around us in order to keep that beauty for a very long time so others can see it and not only us. Through the trip I learnt how to move and be in a different environment than I was comfortable in and I can apply that to my life where I am sometimes in situations where I am not that comfortable in, and I simply have to adapt how I move within that situation or use tools in order to be able to stay in those situations and be more comfortable in them.

My name is Sarah and I’ll be keeping this blog for the next couple of years. This is my first entry and I’d like to keep track of my time at Y.I.S. for future reference and all that. I hope you guys enjoy reading my content and I’ll see some sort of improvement!